Representative Theodore Frelinghuysen Singiser

Theodore Frelinghuysen Singiser (March 15, 1845 – January 23, 1907) was a Delegate from Idaho Territory and a member of the Republican Party whose single term in Congress coincided with a significant period of western territorial development in American history. A member of the prominent Frelinghuysen family, he combined military service, government administration, law, business, and mining interests over the course of a varied public career.

Singiser was born on March 15, 1845, in Churchtown, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. He attended the common schools of the area and, as a young man, learned the art of printing, an occupation that would later support his editorial pursuits. His early life in rural Pennsylvania and training in a skilled trade provided the foundation for his later work in both journalism and public service.

During the American Civil War, Singiser enlisted in the Union Army as a private in Company E, Sixth Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserves, on June 6, 1861. His service in the Union forces placed him among the many young men of his generation whose early adulthood was shaped by the conflict. After the war, in 1866 and 1867, he served as assistant assessor of internal revenue, entering federal service during the Reconstruction era. He also engaged in mercantile and editorial pursuits, drawing on his background in printing and business, and began to study law.

Singiser moved increasingly into federal administrative work in the 1870s. He was employed in the United States Treasury Department from June 1, 1875, to May 31, 1879, a period during which the federal government was consolidating its postwar financial systems. While in Washington, D.C., he continued his legal studies and was admitted to the bar there in 1878. In February 1879 he was appointed receiver of public moneys at Oxford, Idaho, marking the beginning of his long association with the American West. He engaged in mining in Idaho and Utah, reflecting both the economic opportunities of the region and his own growing business interests.

In territorial administration, Singiser rose quickly. He was appointed Secretary of the Territory of Idaho in 1880, a key executive position in the territorial government. During the winter of 1881–1882 he served as Acting Governor of Idaho Territory, exercising the chief executive authority in the territory at a time when federal officials played a central role in local governance. His responsibilities in these posts included oversight of territorial records, public lands, and the implementation of federal policy in a rapidly developing region.

As a member of the Republican Party representing Idaho, Singiser contributed to the legislative process during one term in office. He was elected as a Republican Delegate from Idaho Territory to the Forty-eighth Congress and served from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1885. In this nonvoting but influential role, he participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his constituents in a Congress that was addressing issues of western expansion, land policy, and territorial governance. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1884 to the Forty-ninth Congress, ending his formal congressional service after a single term.

Following his congressional tenure, Singiser continued in federal land administration and business. He was receiver of public money at Mitchell, Dakota (now in South Dakota) from 1885 to 1889, overseeing federal land and financial matters in another developing region of the West. Throughout these years he maintained significant holdings in business and remained involved in mining, extending the commercial activities he had begun in Idaho and Utah. His career thus linked federal administrative service with private enterprise in the mining and land-based economies of the western territories.

Singiser never married. In his later years he resided in the Midwest, and he died on January 23, 1907, in Chicago, Illinois. His body was returned to his native Pennsylvania, and he was interred in Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, closing a life that had spanned from small-town origins in Cumberland County to prominent roles in the territorial and federal institutions of the late nineteenth-century United States.